Blaney also said that police are investigating and that there is “no excuse” for attacking “public property.”

“We are living in a democracy,” Blaney said. “There are many ways to express your views.”

Earlier warning

Wednesday’s blackouts come just a few days after House of Commons IT warned that its employees are "currently being targeted by several cyberattacks."

Two memos sent Friday IT staff said hackers were sending phishing emails that look like they come from official accounts, but instead are a technological ruse to trick recipients into giving up personal information.

Last summer, a phishing scam allowed hackers into the systems of the National Research Council, forcing the NRC to shut down its computer system and use a temporary network.

The federal government blamed China for that attack.

What is a DoS attack?

Toronto-based website security expert Claudiu Popa told CTV News Channel that a denial of service attack is the “low-hanging fruit” of cyberattacks.

“It’s a simple flooding of the website with a number of simulated connections, so you’re pretending to be connecting to the site not from one browser, but from a million,” he said. “They’re not designed to handle that kind of load.”

Popa said the websites that went down Wednesday “don’t contain sensitive information,” and so they are “protected less-so than ones that do have sensitive information.”

“Obviously there’s a bit of a reputational impact when they get taken down,” he added.